Ok so on Monday we discussed Surfing and getting to know your market, today we’ll discuss Advertising to those markets.

On a basic level, knowing what is motivating and what sort of problems the people have that you met this week at your advertising source are massively huge keys to being able to market to them effectively. The greater you can speak specifically to an individuals needs, the better your results will be, so presenting the product in a different way can cause it to attract completely different audiences.

Before we get too deep I want to do some basic math with you all. I see sooo often in Traffic Exchanges people that are advertising a dozen different products.

When you advertise something, you have to understand that the first time someone sees your product – they are going to dislike it. First and foremost, because you are advertising them – you are interrupting the persons favorite thing to throw some sales message at them, so already they are just going to not like you. Thankfully we have an advantage in Traffic Exchanges in that the people are already under the expectation to be seeing these advertising messages, so they won’t hate you as much as they would if you were interrupting their chat session or favorite video.

The biggest challenge is to get them from not liking your product, to a neutral position, and this is done basically through repetition.

I know I said we were going to do math, so I’ll throw some numbers at you – At Traffic Swirl at any given time there are on average 2,000 different full website ads in rotation. The average pages surfed by our members is 378 a day.

With these numbers we can see that if you have your website ad using 1 position, then that means each member is already only seeing your ad once every 5 days – and this is assuming they are surfing daily.

So now if you are advertising 5 different products, that means each person is only seeing your ad once every 25 days. One ad view every 25 days – they won’t even have remembered the last time they saw it since then.. so obvious here the most important thing is to narrow your focus. You can’t advertise 25, 10, even 5 different things and expect to see results, your advertising is spread so thin that nobody is seeing your page often enough to even recognize it. Now again, we are at an advantage in the Traffic Exchanges in that there are likely other people advertising it too, so the viewers will likely be getting that ad message more often than once every 25 days, but even then what are the chances that it’ll be YOUR page they are on when they decide to buy? Once every 25 days with 325 pages a day works out to a chance of 1 in 9,450.

Pretty crappy odds huh? Now flip that, advertise just one thing, put it in 3 slots, and now you are being seen by the same member every other day, bringing those odds waaaaay higher.. in fact 25,000% Increase… a bit insane huh? And that’s not even changing the ad you are using!

Ok so now they are starting to get some repetition, the viewer has gone from getting annoyed with your ad, to having seen the logo enough that it starts to feel familiar. The subconscious effect of our advertising is really the driving force in these early stages — reinforcing the brands logo and images, even if you are advertising to someone who isn’t paying attention to your ads – the repetition of those elements has a subliminal impact and then when they DO pay attention to your ad – those colors and that logo will feel familiar, though the user likely won’t remember why.

Now that your ad as familiar – it is starting to gain credibility. Once that viewer begins to recognize that pattern — it’s only a matter of time. Now they are aware of the ad, and will begin to consciously notice it every time they see those brand logos and images, consistent coloration. At this point it’s only a matter of time before the curiosity gets the better of them, especially now that they’ve seen the ad enough to recognize it, the mob mentality kicks in to play and the user shifts to ‘I see so many people advertising it, it must be good’ — now this is regardless of how many people are actually advertising it, this is just perceived. What’s really happening is they have seen the ad so many times that they think maybe there’s something to it – and so long as your ad is following the basic principles of being designed for the needs of it’s viewer, it becomes no longer a matter of if they will respond to your ad, but when.

Something else worth noting here is to keep in mind the “saturation” of certain products and the tendency of the consumer – essentially when they are faced with too many options to fulfill the same need, they will have no choice but to begin to ignore some – it’s nothing personal, it’s just how the brain works.

It’s extremely important that you do not fall into the category of being forgotten, and the only way to not be forgotten – is to be so memorable that they have no choice but to remember! The only way to achieve this is to stick out in every way possible, a lot of people will tell you to make your own custom ad so that you stand out, and while I agree with this and it does make you stand out, you have to proceed with caution and be very explicit to use the same branding images and colors as the original advertisement for the product you are promoting, or you may miss out on pulling in the views based on the recognition the original brand has created with their brand images. For example if I advertised Traffic Swirl and didn’t put Swirly Paws on it.. Sure I’m making my own cool ad that no one else has and no one has ever seen before, but if I don’t include that subtle branding that the site owner has been using to build familiarity, your ad may just skipped right by without even being noticed, because you went from advertising something that the viewer has some sense of familiarity with.. and shifted it back to square 1 where they don’t even recognize it and are now just annoyed again because you are interrupting their experience.

Another way to squeeze a little more out of your Traffic Exchange advertising is to advertise a sort of opt-in. When you use Traffic Exchanges to build your list, it becomes very easy to narrow that focus – you can simply funnel everyone through your opt in page, and then use your list to promote the specific offers. The benefits of list building are too many for this post, but just one of the basic ones you are getting from this action is that now you are turning that 1 view of your page, into several different offers to the same user. Also it’s very easy for a surfer to just plop in their email address and keep surfing, then it is for them to click a splash page which goes to a sales page which then goes to an opt in.. every time that user has to click further and further from what their original intention was (Surfing) the more likely you are to lose them.

I think I’ve rambled on enough about Advertising in Traffic Exchanges, I know this doesn’t even scratch the surface, but hopefully I’ve at least got you thinking about your Advertising in Traffic Exchanges, just simply being aware of how the process works and how people are interacting with your ads is a huge first step towards advertising success.. Make sure to come back on Friday and I’ll talk about how to leverage Surfing and Advertising into master affiliate power.